Week #2 Challenge

There are a lot of challenges in genealogy, but the biggest one I deal with is researching Newfoundland records. Newfoundland became Canada’s newest province in 1949, after being a Colony of England and then a Dominion of the British Commonwealth. I call it home.

Newfoundland is an island off the east coast of Canada, in the North Atlantic Ocean. My paternal grandparents were both born in the UK, and my mother is from Nova Scotia – as were both of her parents – so I never really considered myself a “true” Newfoundlander like my friends even though I was born here. That is, until I started researching my family history. Mom’s maternal grandfather John Thomas Rose (Papa to me) may have lived in Nova Scotia, but he was born in Newfoundland in 1902. All of my roots in Newfoundland are through him.

I have managed to trace several of Papa’s branches back along the south coast and to Fortune Bay in the 1700s, making them some of the original settling families. However, these communities were quite small, generally fishing villages, and there were few churches to keep written records. Some of the records that were kept have been lost over time, through fires or other means. This results in large gaps in the records.

There are also no regular census records, even though Newfoundland was an English colony. Census records that were kept were often not nominal, or only recorded head of household. Additionally, they were often regional, so if there was a census available at a certain time period, it may not be for the area I’m looking for.

Another complication, which is common in many areas, is the abundance of people with the same names. However, in an isolated population like Newfoundland, there are additional difficulties because most people worked in the same industry (fishing), belonged to the same religious denomination (Anglican), and their family members had the same names as the other local families.

Papa Rose’s paternal grandparents are long-standing brick walls for me, due to a combination of common local names and sparse records. DNA indicates my connection to other Rose descendants, but with such a relatively small, isolated population along that coast, and since my known ancestors were among the original settling families, I could be related to those DNA matches any number of ways. Some of my Shared Ancestor Hints on Ancestry indicate three or four common ancestral lines!

I’m unsure if I’ll ever break through my Newfoundland brick walls, but if I do I suspect it will be due to connecting to DNA matches who have information that may have been passed down through their families. Here’s hoping!

First

After a lengthy break, I’m returning to my blog although active research is still on hold for the foreseeable future. I’ve decided to attempt Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge in 2019! I can’t guarantee that I’ll have an entry each week, but hopefully I can get most of them.

Week 1’s challenge is simply titled “First”, so I thought about various firsts in my family and decided to write about the first known university graduate in my family. I remember when I initially found about the first graduate that I was surprised and pleased to discover it was a woman. In writing this, I realized that I actually know very little about her, often my knowledge is tangentially-related through her husband or other family members.

My 2x great-aunt Charlotte Elsie Hitcham, who was called Lottie, was the seventh of ten children born to Robert Hitcham and Mary Ann Fewster. She was born in Whitby, Yorkshire, England on 11 August 1878. Robert was a Master Mariner, Freemason, and a minister on the Wesleyan Methodist circuit until his unexpected death in 1894, while Mary Ann stayed home and raised the children.

Lottie and her siblings grew up financially well-off thanks to their father’s job, and it would seem that they were fairly progressive for the time, since at least a couple of the daughters worked in shops prior to marriage. I haven’t yet discovered whether Lottie held such a job, but she is the only one of her sisters, to my knowledge, who attended university.

Charlotte Elsie Hitcham, Leeds University Graduate 1905

Information I have found indicates that Lottie graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Leeds University in 1905. She soon landed a teaching job at the Methodist College (Holloway School) in St. John’s, Newfoundland, then moved to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1909 where she met her future husband, Dr. William Alva Gifford, a Doctor of Divinity. They were married in Cambridge, Massachussetts in 1913 while he attended Harvard University. The couple settled in Montreal, Quebec by 1915 where he was a professor at McGill University.

The 1921 census indicates that Lottie’s occupation was “None”, so it seems that she perhaps stayed home with the children, at least until they attended school in England. More recent census records have not yet been released.  I have no additional records of any kind to indicate what she may have been up to until her death, and Google searches pull up hits for her husband and children, but only mention Lottie in passing. Perhaps she returned to teaching, perhaps she stayed home, I really don’t know.

From my grandmother, Lottie’s niece, I know that Lottie died of cancer 29 July 1949 in Montreal at the age of 70. She raised two children who both went on to become academics, so clearly education was an important part of her life, and their lives.

Aunt Lottie must have been a strong woman to attend – and graduate from – university at a time when women didn’t generally obtain post-secondary education. She must have also been quite independent to move overseas to Newfoundland and then to British Columbia by herself as a young woman. It’s a privilege to call her my family.

June Update

I can't believe how long it's been since I've updated! It's been a busy few months!

I finished my Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Studies from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies and will be virtually attending my graduation next week!

I've also made some great contacts with dna and genealogical matches, some of whom have even become friends, and have been able to break a couple of long-standing brick walls!

One such contact passed on the lore that our mutual ancestors had been gypsies (from here on I will refer to them as Roma) in London, England, which I hadn't heard before. I asked in a DNA facebook group if there was anything particular I should look for in my dna, and was told to run the Eurogenese K13 Admixture on GedMatch, and look for South_Asian. If it was true Roma, I was told, I would probably have about 1 % because Roma originated in India. Sure enough, I was 1.18 %. I haven't looked into the dna aspect of it enough to know if that confirms it or not, but certainly the documents I've since found from England seem to support it!

And I finally got a Shared Ancestor Hint on Ancestry through my great-great-grandfather, going back to my 5th great-grandparents! This was a huge deal to me, because he was born just 5 months after his parents' wedding in 1839 and I was starting to question his paternity. I've had the paper trail done for years, but until now had ZERO confirmed dna matches on that side, outside of our 4 known family members (me, my father, my paternal grandmother, and my second cousin). Now we have a dna match, and I had actually traced his family to about his great-grandmother, so our paper trails matched up so well.

I've said it before, but I'll try to update more regularly again.

Go dtí an chéad uair eile.

Update

I've really been terrible at updating lately, sorry! No excuses, just life getting in the way!

So, what have I been up to? More of the same, really. Lots of corresponding with new and existing dna matches, paper trail matches, sorting out the dna results for the newest kit I'm administrating, looking into one branch of my family very closely to see if I can find where a couple of probable distant cousins fit in, working on my final course, watching webinars, and of course working on my do-over. I'm up to more than four dozen people in my new tree now, which is lower than I had hoped to have by now, but it's at least progress, and I know I'm entering things correctly.

I haven't done much more yet with Genome Mate Pro, but I'm still hopeful that I can figure it out, because I think it will become a very valuable tool if I do.

So that's it, short and sweet this week. I'm going to try (again) to update weekly, but we'll have to see how that goes...

Go dtí an chéad uair eile.

Update

Sorry I've disappeared for a couple of weeks, I was under the weather for about a week and didn't even look at anything related to genealogy. But I did manage to accomplish a few things aside from that, though once again not related to my do-over. I expect the do-over work to resume again next week.

The most important thing I've done since my last post is I had the first consultation for my course. I've previously mentioned that I'm taking the final course for my Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Studies, so that has to take priority over anything else, at least in terms of genealogy. The consultation went well, and I expect to resume course work again this weekend.

I've also recently joined several genealogy-related facebook groups for different locations in my family history, and as a result I've been making contacts with a lot of new people. Correspondence with new contacts was actually very time consuming, taking almost all of my time over a few different evenings! One person in particular was extremely helpful for some Northern Ireland research, even locating a marriage entry for my 3rd great-grandparents. This entry provided the marriage date, as well as the specific church, which is quite helpful! Thank you very much, Shirley!

As I previously mentioned, one of my dna matches is an adoptee. I'm pleased to say that she has discovered the identities of both of her birth parents, so we were in touch a fair bit about that. Another dna match is the daughter of an adoptee, and I think we finally managed to narrow things down quite a bit. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we find something more definite!

So as you can see, that's a fair amount of corresponding between various contacts! I've recently also downloaded Genome Mate Pro to try to keep track of my various contacts, but so far I'm in the learning stages. If I can't figure it out by the end of the month, I'll just do up a spreadsheet to keep track.

As a result of looking things up for new dna matches, I got dozens of new hints on Ancestry. This led me to a few new family members, and several new documents, including passports with photos! That also took an entire evening to go through, though it was absolutely worth it.

My goal for the next week or so is to resume my coursework, as well as my do-over. Hopefully I can update you on both of those next time!

Go dtí an chéad uair eile.

Do-Over Week 3...Or Not

Well, this week was a write-off, in terms of the do-over. A couple of other genealogy things came up this week that I was spending a lot of time on, and didn't get a chance to even look at my do-over.

I was checking out my grandmother's dna matches, particularly those with trees attached, and ended up finding someone that had a death date for my 3rd great-grandmother that I didn't previously have. She has been a brick wall of mine for years, so needless to say I had to follow it up! I went looking for more information and stumbled upon a thread on a message board about her and her family! Obviously I wasn't about to consider the information in that thread to be proof, so I had to do more digging to find documentation to prove or disprove it all. I actually spent several nights this week looking into the information contained in that thread and I'm still not finished!

I've also been in fairly regular contact with a dna match distant cousin who was adopted. We know from GEDmatch that our most recent common ancestor is about 5 generations back. Through mutual matches, I was able to determine which side of my family she's on, but not specifically which line she's on. But based on new information she discovered this week, we think we now know which surname line the connection is on. The trick now is to get back far enough to prove or disprove it.

So even with no progress on my do-over, attempting to break a long-standing brick wall and helping an adoptee find her roots are valid reasons, as far as I'm concerned! Hopefully I can make some progress on all three projects this coming week!

Go dtí an chéad uair eile. 

Do-Over Week 2

Another week of progress! Slow going, but progress none the less.

I decided that since I was using Legacy Family Tree for my do-over, that I wanted to make sure I was using the best practices to make the most of my effort. Legacy has a fantastic library of webinars, many of which are free. So I located one on sourcing called Sources and Citations Made Simple, Standard, and Powerful (watch it here http://familytreewebinars.com/download.php?webinar_id=201). I found it extremely helpful! It confirmed that I was sourcing correctly in general, but showed me how I could improve both creating a citation and organizing them through more standardization, and save time!

I only had a few people in my tree earlier this week, so it was a great chance to edit a couple of sources to be more standardized, though most of my sources were already satisfactory. There was a bit of a learning curve for some of the new practices I'll be adopting, but once things are fully set-up with the main sources I'll be using, it will go much faster. Then as I enter people, I'll only need to enter their specific details which will save time. Using the Legacy source clip-board which I've never previously used will take time to get used to, but will absolutely cut down on time once I practice and get comfortable with it.

My Master Source List is looking nice and stream-lined at the moment, and I'm up to 16 people in the new tree. I still have a long way to go, but I know that my do-over is off to a solid start. I'm pleased with my do-over progress to date, especially since I've been focused on my course. I know I have a long way to go, but I look forward to the sense of accomplishment once it's complete!

Go dtí an chéad uair eile.